After escaping Fiskardo, we had a nice downwind sail of only three miles to Polis Bay, home of Odysseus’ palace once he returned to Ithaca after his journey. We found a nice spot in front of the swimming area, dropped our anchor, and relaxed. Lots of boats came in throughout the afternoon, including friends Mark and Susanna from s/v Lady Lea, but everyone spaced out nicely. The mega yacht Zeus who took up a good chunk of the bay moved on, leaving us smaller cruising boats to ourselves (if you look as you cruise, you will often see one mega yacht in each bay).
We swam and lounged the afternoon away, not going ashore till after 7 when the heat dropped. Mark had the name of a local taxi, which was good because it’s a long uphill walk to the town of Stavros. It’s a small place in the hills, but utterly charming and we had drinks at the cafe, followed by dinner at the Delicous Taverna (it truly was), followed by ice cream back at the original cafe.
We opted to stay the next day as I had a meeting by zoom later in the afternoon. I took the paddle board out to go explore the shoreline and use as a snorkeling base, where Mark showed me the ruins of ancient pottery shards twenty feet down on the rocky bottom. Meanwhile, Trip rigged up the dinghy and went for a sail.
We couldn’t resist it, Polis Bay was so nice we decided to stay yet another day. This time we committed to taking the taxi up to Odysseus’ palace ruins and then dinner at Myrtia. We started at the top in the village of Exogi, where we left Mark and Susanna for dinner. We headed down to the palace ruins. Despite having been warned that one needs to use their imagination, we could easily see what was once there as a castle or fortification. The amazing thing is that ruins are everywhere in Greece, and so are artifact remnants. Shards of pottery were laying everywhere and no one walked off with a ‘souvenir’, amazing. (I had seen the same snorkeling that morning – remnants of Roman (?) pottery 7 meters down while I was snorkeling – no one has ever taken any of these pieces.).
After exploring the ruins, we walked down to one of the loveliest meals we’ve had all season. The restaurant Myrtia (Myrtle) features locally sourced ingredients with an upscale preparation. The views alone were breathtaking.
After a delightful meal including Myrtle-berry lemonade, onion pie with zucchini salad, beef stifado (stew), and local wines, we gratefully met Dimitra the taxi driver to head back up the hill to Exogi. There the village was celebrating the festival of Aga Marina. Celebrations in Greece involve local music, local wine (or ouzo), and a lot of dancing. Well into the wee hours. After a lot of ouzo and a lot of dancing, we headed back to the sleepy anchorage party carried on.
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